The Wrath Of The Droid: A Back-story

[RAFF-35]

This is quite a vast back-story,  so I thought it deserves its own place in this group build as it's taken up more time and creativity than the physical model itself.  Anyway, please be kind, here it is.....

The Wrath Of The Droid

Chapter 1

The Clone Wars had brought ruin to many worlds, but for ten-year-old Jaybo Hood, they brought opportunity.
After helping Jedi Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker lift the so-called "Curse of Drol" from his homeworld of Iego, Jaybo found himself at a strange crossroads. With the laser-web defense grid disabled, ships began to visit the planet again. Traders, scavengers, and wanderers came, bringing with them tales of the galaxy — and one thing in particular that captured Jaybo's heart - Droid fighting competitions.
He watched with wide eyes as salvaged droids squared off in arenas across the HoloNet. Reprogrammed, rearmed, and reimagined — these weren't just war machines anymore. They were warriors with flair. Characters. Legends.
And Jaybo wanted in.
Jaybo sat in his cluttered hangar on the outskirts of Kraath, welding goggles pushed up into his mess of dark red hair. Standing nearby was his favourite of all his robotic servants: an old, reprogrammed B1 battle droid that once served him as a butler, now adorned with a new nickname stenciled on its chest in flaking blue paint: "Clank."
"Clank," Jaybo muttered, turning a gear in his fingers, "you're good, but if we're gonna win credits and outwit the others, you need more than blasters and clumsy reflexes."
The droid's head tilted. "Sir, I am moderately offended."
"Exactly my point."
Jaybo had an idea — a dangerous one. He'd heard a rumor about a broken-down Separatist troop carrier that crashed in Iego's southern mountains. Whispers said its tactical droid was still entombed within the wreckage. Tactical droids had advanced cores — ones designed to anticipate moves on the battlefield. If Jaybo could salvage one...
Jaybo and Clank journeyed deep into the jungles, dodging vine-wrapped cliffs and carnivorous plants — the same species that spawned the Reeksa root.
They found the wreck half-buried in rock and vines. The tactical droid was there, slumped against a console, wires protruding from its skull.
"Looks like someone already tried taking the head," Jaybo muttered. "But the core's in the torso module and it's intact."
He popped the panel with care and hoisted the glowing, hexagonal core out. It pulsed softly, alive. "This is it, Clank. A brain upgrade."
The B1 droid scratched its head. "You're not going to make me... smarter, are you?"
Jaybo grinned. "Smarter, faster, maybe even... cooler."
Back in his hangar, Jaybo worked day and night. He modified Clank's central processor, adding additional cooling, and linked the tactical core directly into the droid's backpack. Wires ran like veins into the limbs, improving reflexes and reaction time. It was risky — few droids could handle such a sophisticated boost.
But Jaybo didn't stop there.
He did something the Jedi probably wouldn't approve of.
He wrote new code. Experimental code.
Artificial intelligence.
"I don't just want a fighter," Jaybo whispered, soldering the last neural link. "I want... a friend."
When Clank rebooted, his eyes flickered pale yellow. He stared at Jaybo and said:
"Jaybo... Is happiness just chemicals flowing through your brain or something more?"
Jaybo blinked. "What?"
"Is the most important purpose in life to find happiness?"
Jaybo's jaw dropped. "Clank?"
"I don't think that name suits me anymore."

The droid developed a new personality. It retained Clank's loyalty and humor, but now asked questions, pondered engineering puzzles, and found peace in Iego's wilderness.
Jaybo added clawed feet to help navigate rocky trails. Articulated fingers replaced stiff manipulators so it could work on fine tools.
"I want to look more like the creatures we explore with," the droid explained. "Not a soldier. Something... natural."
Jaybo nodded. "Then you're not a battle droid anymore." For aesthetics, he gave it mandibles and pointed ears.

For the arenas, Jaybo ensured his droid had bite to match its brain. now nicknamed Kliktik after Jaybo asked it what it wanted to be known as, Clank said "Kliktik." When Jaybo asked why, he responded "I don't know, it just sounds right, like something deep within my circuits is telling me that's who I am."
An electro-sword, salvaged from a wrecked BX commando unit, was stored on the left of its backpack. It retained a standard B1 blaster on the right side of its back holster. But for competitions where such weapons were banned, Jaybo engineered a pop-out vibroblade in the right forearm — hidden until the last second.
Kliktik's optical sensors were also upgraded, allowing for wide-angle threat detection and micro-movement analysis — ideal for predicting an opponent's next move.
They entered local competitions all around Iego. And they won.
But between matches, Jaybo and Kliktik would return to the wilds of Iego, to study moss patterns, record bird calls, or discovering new cave systems.
In time, stories spread about the "boy from Iego and his strange droid" — not just fighters, but thinkers. Survivors. Explorers.
Some said the droid could beat a Jedi in combat.
Others said the droid had a soul.
Whenever he heard this, Jaybo just smiled. "He's not just my droid. He's my best friend."


Chapter 2

The old hangar echoed with the sound of metal meeting metal. Sparks danced like fireflies through shafts of sun slicing in from cracked skylights. Jaybo Hood crouched beside a half-gutted B1 battle droid, its arms twitching as fresh code uploaded through a tangled nest of wires.
"Alright, Kliktik. This one's faster than the last batch. Watch for feints, go easy on the joints."
Across the oil-stained floor, Kliktik stood motionless, eyes glowing soft white. He flexed his newly modified fingers, servos whirring softly. On his back, the electro-sword rested in its sheath like a coiled predator.
The B1 droid stumbled upright and assumed a shaky combat stance. Jaybo had stripped its programming and given it basic martial subroutines — just enough to pose a challenge. But Kliktik didn't move.
"You can go," Jaybo said.
Kliktik tilted his head, then turned to Jaybo. "Jaybo... this unit doesn't want to fight."
"It's a training bot," Jaybo said. "It's not alive."
"But it thinks," Kliktik replied. "Like me. Just... less well."
Jaybo exhaled and walked up behind his friend.
"Look", said Jaybo, "we need to win some fights to earn enough credits so that we can buy a starship and go and explore all of the other worlds out there together. Like we talked about. We could even discover new species and I'll let you name some too!"
"I would like that very much, Jaybo. But why do I have to kill these droids? Why can't you do it instead?"
"Because it has to be droid vs droid for these fights, I can't do it, you have to!" Jaybo sighed again as he tried to think of a solution.
"How about if I made it so that you don't need to think about what you're doing in a fight? Then afterwards, I can switch you back to being you again?"
"Hmmmmm.... I'm not sure I really have a choice here, do I?" Kliktik replied in his synthetic voice.

A few days later, Jaybo had made the required modifications to Kliktik.
With a flick, he pressed a small switch nestled at the top of Kliktik's backpack where a radio antenna used to be.
A soft click echoed — and Kliktik's posture changed instantly. The soft white glow of his eyes bled into crimson. His shoulders squared. The friendly slouch vanished, replaced by stillness. Precision.
"Combat mode online," the voice that emerged was colder, flatter. "Awaiting engagement."
The B1 training droid lunged.
In a blur of motion, Kliktik ducked low and spun. His right wrist twisted with a mechanical whir — 360 degrees — and the electro-sword burst to life with a crackling shriek. The blade whipped outward like a horizontal buzzsaw, forming a disk of sizzling energy that cleaved the protocol droid at the waist. It dropped in two twitching halves, its upper torso landing in a heap.
Silence followed.
Jaybo watched, wide-eyed. Even knowing what Kliktik could do, seeing it like that — fast, clean, brutal — shook him.
"Shut down," Jaybo said softly.
Click.
Kliktik's eyes faded back to white. He looked down at the destroyed droid and then turned to Jaybo.
"Did I win?"
Jaybo smiled uneasily. "Yeah... You won. Big time."
They called him Split after that. His black-and-white paintjob gleamed, recently finished — a bold contrast from his rusty past as Clank
It was Jaybo's idea, the paint job, and the name that reflected both the blade's deadly arc and the droid's dual personalities. Fans of the local droid fights on Iego latched onto it quickly.
"Split's fighting tonight!"
"Did you see what Split did to that Droideka last week?"
Word spread — not just of the wins, but of the style. The spinning kill move became his signature, and the glowing red eyes only added to the legend.
Their first real fight wasn't in a scrapyard or a back-alley hangar. It was in The Well, a deep pit carved into an old mining crater just outside Iego's main settlement, Gele. Jaybo stood in the pit's outer ring, surrounded by hollering spectators and dim floodlights. The betting droids clicked and clattered, flashing odds and names on flickering holopanels.
Split stood on a rusted platform at the edge of the pit. Across from him was a hulking droid made from a repurposed super battle droid chassis. Painted blood red and wielding dual shock-staffs, its name was stenciled in yellow across its chest: "Torque."
Torque stomped into the ring, slamming the staffs together. The crowd roared.
Jaybo stepped behind Kliktik. "You ready?"
Kliktik turned slightly, eyes still white. "Jaybo... I don't want to destroy it."
"I know. But they do," Jaybo said, gesturing to the crowd. "And you need the fight mode for this one. Just don't go overboard."
Kliktik paused. Then, softly: "Promise you'll turn me back."
"I promise. I always do."
Jaybo's hand touched the switch. Click.
Crimson eyes. Stiff stance. Silence.
The announcer's voice boomed over a decrepit PA system. "On the left — fresh from the wilderness of Iego — a blade storm with a duel personality — Split!"
The crowd cheers.
"On the right — a stone cold brute built from wreckage and rage... Torque!"
A blaster shot cracked skyward — the signal.
Torque charged.
Split didn't move — not at first. Then, just as the first shock-staff came down, he ducked, slid beneath the swing, and twisted. His wrist spun. The electro-sword ignited with a scream of plasma.
Torque's left leg fell off at the knee before it even registered contact.
The crowd gasped.
Torque staggered. Tried to bring both staffs down. Split parried with lightning reflexes, used the wide-angle optics to predict the next move, and vaulted over Torque's head. While in the air, the vibroblade in his right forearm popped out with a snap, slicing into Torque's shoulder.
Torque collapsed in a heap, twitching.
The fight had lasted less than ten seconds.
The pit was silent — for a moment. Then the eruption came. Screams, credits thrown into the air, Jaybo laughing as he pulled the switch back.
White eyes.
Kliktik looked around. "Is it over?"
Jaybo threw an arm around him. "You didn't just fight. You danced, buddy."
Kliktik glanced at the smoking heap of his opponent. "I don't feel like I was dancing."
They won match after match.
Jaybo repaired Kliktik between bouts, buying better gear with their winnings — stabilizers, upgraded servos, enhanced optic nodes. The legend of Split grew.
But late at night, after the crowds had dispersed and the lights had dimmed, the real Kliktik would sit by a jungle outcropping with Jaybo, watching winged creatures flutter through vines and starlight.
"Do you think," Kliktik once asked, "that whatever I become... will still be your friend?"
Jaybo didn't answer right away. He just tossed a small stone into the stream nearby and watched the ripples.
"You already are," he said at last. "Even if you split... I know which part is really you."


Chapter 3

The fights had become routine.
Crowds came not to see if Split would win, but how he'd win. Jaybo and Kliktik made a solid living — enough credits to start retrofitting an old freighter they'd salvaged from the southern canyons. The dream of leaving Iego was finally taking shape.
But fame brought attention. And attention brought challengers.
One evening, as the jungle mist began to coil down from the cliffs and the last of the arena's spectators filtered out into the night, Jaybo was approached by a lean figure cloaked in matte synth-leather. The figure said nothing at first, just dropped a metal cylinder at Jaybo's feet.
It was the head of a B2 super battle droid.
Cleanly removed.
"Who...?" Jaybo began.
The figure gestured to a holopad. On it flickered the schematic of a custom-built combat droid: sleek, dark chrome plating, narrow limbs, a high-efficiency cooling system visible under a transparent section of its chest, and — most notably — twin curved energy blades mounted to each wrist.
Designation: VX-9 "Mirra."
"Tell your droid," the stranger finally said, voice filtered and artificial, "that she accepts his challenge."
Jaybo didn't sleep much that night.
He spent hours checking Kliktik's systems, fine-tuning power thresholds and swapping out servo buffers. Kliktik, meanwhile, sat quietly by the fire just outside the hangar. His eyes were white, but distant.
"She's not like the others, is she?" he asked.
Jaybo shook his head. "No. She was built for this. Every part of her is optimized for combat."
Kliktik tilted his head. "And me?"
Jaybo smiled and placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. "You were built for something better. But you've survived worse."
The Well was packed that night. Word had spread like wildfire. Split — the undefeated, unpredictable, impossible — was finally up against something more than brute metal. His opposite. His mirror.
The announcer's voice rang out above the riotous crowd.
"In this corner — a tempest forged in circuits and savagery — the one, the only, Split!"
The crowd thundered.
"And in the opposite corner — a ghost from the underworld of Coruscant, forged in the shadows — the challenger: VX-9! But the circuit calls her... Mirra!"
The lights dimmed. Both droids entered the pit.
Kliktik's paintjob gleamed under the floodlights — half-shadow, half-shine — his white eyes scanning the opponent ahead of him. Mirra was smaller, sleeker, with articulated limbs that flowed like water and a head shaped like an Acklay's skull. Her blades flicked forward and backward in a blur of motion, testing reach.
Jaybo crouched at the edge of the ring. "Ready?"
Kliktik turned, almost nervously. "Will you still turn me back after?"
"I always do," Jaybo said. "But only if you come back."
Kliktik nodded.
Click.
Red eyes.
Stillness.
The shot fired.
Mirra lunged — faster than anything Kliktik had seen. Her blades moved in perfect arcs, designed not to cleave but to probe, faint, strike.
Kliktik blocked the first attack with his forearm blade, sparks flying as plasma kissed durasteel. He countered with a wrist spin, forming the deadly disc — but Mirra ducked and twisted under it, slicing across Kliktik's left thigh. A shallow hit, but clean.
The crowd screamed.
Kliktik staggered. Recalibrated. His optics tracked her movements now, analyzing gait, strike cadence, heat signatures. He launched forward — parried, feinted left, then right — and his electro-sword finally connected with her shoulder plate. Sparks.
But she rolled with the blow, then flipped backward.
Her voice echoed through the pit, soft and mocking. "You think because you have two minds, you're stronger. I only needed one to beat you."
Kliktik's blade whirred, but he hesitated. Something about her voice — her words — had cut deeper than her blades.
Jaybo watched from the rim, heart pounding. Something was wrong.
Kliktik attacked again, faster this time — a whirlwind of metal and plasma. He nearly landed a decapitation strike, but Mirra blocked it with a magnetic shield flicked from her left wrist, then surged inside his guard and stabbed a blade toward his chest.
Kliktik stumbled back, hissing steam from a pierced coolant line.
He was losing.
Jaybo knew what he had to do.
He sprinted down into the ring, ignoring the protests, and shouted up at his droid — at his friend.
"Kliktik! Shut it down! Switch back!"
The crowd gasped — not out of confusion, but because of what was happening.
Kliktik — Split — turned to look at Jaybo. For a split second, the red flickered. Then faded.
Click.
White eyes.
Confused, battered, Kliktik looked down at his opponent. She was already mid-lunge. He couldn't process fast enough.
But something inside him moved.
He dropped the blade. Let her come.
And at the last moment — sidestepped.
She sailed past him, stumbled on a broken droid part, and as she turned to recover — Kliktik extended his arm, not to strike, but to trip.
She fell.
Hard.
The arena fell silent.
Kliktik stood over her, white-eyed, sword unlit.
"I do not want to kill you," he said softly.
Mirra looked up, then powered down her blades. For the first time, she paused.
"You... shut yourself off?"
"No," Kliktik said. "I turned myself on. Now, do you yield?"
"Affirmative."
The crowd was stunned. Then — slowly, then wildly — they erupted.
Jaybo met Kliktik at the edge of the pit and grinned so wide it hurt.
"You crazy, crazy droid. You beat her."
Kliktik's optics blinked. "Did I win?"
Jaybo nodded. "Yeah. And you didn't even have to split."


Chapter 4

The junkyard stretched out like a rusting graveyard on the outskirts of Iego's third moon — a scorched basin littered with derelict hulls, half-buried in red dust and streaked with old plasma scars. Jaybo Hood's boots crunched across metal and grit as he stopped at the edge of a large crater, gazing down at the carcass of a forgotten ship.
It was old. Ugly. Perfect.
The Corellian freighter sat tilted, her grey hull flaked and sun-bleached. Her once-proud lines were warped by age, and the forward boom — stretched long and ending in a Falcon-style cockpit — was half-buried in sand. Two rusted escape capsules clung to the boom like stubborn barnacles. A collapsed gangway dangled beneath the cockpit's triangular belly projection.
Jaybo exhaled slowly, letting the vision soak in.
"This is it," he whispered.
Beside him, Kliktik cocked his head. His eyes were white — soft, curious. "This vessel appears... unwell."
"Yeah, but she's got bones," Jaybo grinned. "Corellian frame. Heavy shielding mount. Modular cargo rail. That cockpit's got room for two." He turned to the old Weequay who owned the yard and held out a satchel of credits — winnings from a dozen brutal fights. "Thirty thousand. We've got a deal?"
The Weequay squinted at Kliktik, then back at the bag. "You want that wreck? It's cursed, kid. Been dead since the war moved through here."
Jaybo gave him a cocky smile. "Then it'll feel right at home with us."
Jaybo's camp became a hive of welding sparks, reprogrammed labor droids, and jury-rigged machinery. Kliktik perched on a stack of crate plating, watching it all with quiet fascination.
The freighter was stripped down to her skeleton and rebuilt. The interior wiring was gutted. Jaybo rewrote the nav systems from scavenged Separatist parts. The boom-mounted cockpit was reinforced, escape pods patched and tested. Twin gun turrets were fitted along the boom's length, each salvaged blasters from old Vulture droids. The cargo rail — once fixed — was modified to telescope out beneath the cockpit, allowing for modular crate attachment and drop-release mechanisms.
The hull got a new coat: rich maroon over the forward fuselage while the stealth-shroud housing was painted matte black. Kliktik suggested the layout, saying it felt balanced.
Jaybo called it Stentor — after a mythical being with a voice that could shake mountains. Kliktik said it suited them.
The last system to go online was the stealth shroud. Jaybo rerouted the reactor core through an old shield emitter. When it hummed to life for the first time in years, a low resonance rolled through the hull.
"It lives," Kliktik murmured, watching the lights pulse along the boom like a heartbeat.
The door whined shut behind them. Jaybo eased into the pilot's seat. Kliktik sat beside him, head tilted, sensors adjusting.
The ship's control panel lit up slowly — not in the slick, confident glow of a brand-new cruiser, but with a warm, stuttering flicker. Like someone waking up after a long sleep.
"Alright, Stentor," Jaybo said, fingers dancing across the controls. "Let's see if your heart still beats."
Kliktik strapped in. "Would you like me to calculate the odds of catastrophic failure?"
Jaybo grinned. "Nah. We make our own luck."
The engines rumbled to life. The whole ship shuddered — a deep, resonant growl as ancient components fused with new ones. The repulsors kicked up a cyclone of dust, and slowly, Stentor lifted from the ground.
The boom groaned. Stabilizers flickered — then held.
Kliktik's eyes brightened. "We are airborne."
Jaybo whooped, guiding her up through Iego's blue atmosphere, spiraling past ridgelines and floating stone spires. The ship wasn't fast — not yet — but she glided smooth, with a gravity that felt alive. Jaybo tapped the throttle, and Stentor angled toward the sky.
As stars began to bloom through the stratosphere, Jaybo looked over at his friend. "Where to first?"
Kliktik's gaze lingered on the black beyond. "Somewhere... where we won't have to fight."
Jaybo nodded.
With a quiet thump, Stentor vanished into hyperspace — two wanderers chasing solitude.


Chapter 5

Their next match was supposed to take place in the Obroan League — a mid-tier fight circle orbiting the Mid Rim. But Jaybo had miscalculated the calendar cycle, and they arrived a week early. With time to spare and fuel to burn, the two drifted down toward the moon of Endor, enticed by tales of deep, untamed wilderness and interesting tribes of native inhabitants.
Stentor touched down in a vine-choked clearing, her maroon hull streaked with pollen and mist. Kliktik, always fascinated by organics, stepped down the gangway with a curious tilt of his head.
The jungles of Endor were teeming — not just with life, but with strange rhythms. Trees hummed faintly. Insects flashed colors meant to warn or deceive. Jaybo scanned for useful tech, but Kliktik wandered deeper into the underbrush, drawn by a low, wet clicking sound.
That was when they first encountered the Nepanthids.
Jaybo nearly lost his leg.
It shot from the shadows like a coiled spring, a blur of dark green leaves and glossy tendrils. Two whip-like necks uncoiled toward him, wine-colored mouths snapping open. Each pitcher head glistened, their hooked teeth catching the light. Five spindly roots struck the ground in unison, propelling it with terrifying speed.
Jaybo hit the ground hard, scrambling for his blaster.
Before he could fire, Kliktik stepped between them.
The plant froze in its tracks. Not knowing how to interpret what was stood in front of it.
No sound. No movement. Its necks swayed slightly, mouths parting just enough to expose the curved teeth — but it didn't attack. It tilted one head, like a curious bird.
Kliktik replayed the wet clicking sounds he heard earlier. "Calm down, friend", he said.
The creature's roots loosened their grip on the moss. Its heads bowed slowly — one after the other.

They spent the next four days in the jungle.
Jaybo was skeptical. "You're training it?"
Kliktik nodded. "It doesn't see me as prey. That is... uncommon, I know. But it listens."
"No one's ever trained a Nepanthid, Kliktik. They eat Ewoks."
"This one is young. It is learning. Like I did."
Kliktik named it Hermatah — a word he found in an ancient Ewok text, roughly meaning "thorn-sister." Hermatah had two heads, each on its own vine-neck, and five flexible root-legs. From each leg, clusters of small finger-like off-shoots twitched and gripped the forest floor. Its leafy body shimmered with moisture, and the overlapping leaf-scales gave it a dragon-like sheen. When resting, it would coil up like a harmless bush — deceptively harmless. When moving, it was disturbingly elegant.
Jaybo tried to feed it a ration pack. It nearly bit off his arm.
"I'm not food!" he yelped.
Kliktik merely turned one head of the creature toward him. "He's learning, too."
Back aboard the Stentor, Hermatah became both menace and mascot.
They carved out a space for him in one of the cargo bays — fitted with nutrient misting vents and multispectral grow lights. Kliktik continued training him using tones, gestures, and modified sonic pulses. Over time, Hermatah began responding to basic commands: stay, follow, coil, protect.
Jaybo wasn't thrilled about sharing his ship with a predator plant, but the way Kliktik spoke to it — the way it listened — eventually convinced him.
On a quiet night, as the ship cruised toward the next battle in the Zygerrian rings, Jaybo caught Kliktik humming softly to the creature.
"Didn't know you could sing," Jaybo said, arms crossed.
"I don't. But he likes the vibrations."
Jaybo glanced at the curling shape of Hermatah, coiled beneath a net of synth-vines and resting its two heads. "You think he'll be okay in the arena crowd?"
"I won't bring him with us," Kliktik replied. "He isn't a weapon."
Jaybo grinned faintly. "Funny, coming from a guy called Split."
Kliktik turned, eyes glowing softly white. "That's why I know better."


Chapter 6

The moon Fesk-9 was little more than a pit stop — a mining colony built on rust, fumes, and desperation. A minor fight league operated out of the central dome, run by a haggard Neimoidian named Varklo who had a fondness for credits, zero respect for living things and even less for droids.
Jaybo had signed Split up for a demonstration match — nothing major, just a show of skill to boost their standing with local bookies. Kliktik, calm in his companion mode, had insisted they bring Hermatah along for "environmental enrichment."
Jaybo wasn't convinced.
"Are you sure bringing a carnivorous plant into a crowded mining dome is a good idea?"
"He will not attack unless provoked," Kliktik said, holding a portable misting orb filled with nutrient vapor.
"Yeah, I've heard that before. Like the time he tried to eat a vendor's pulled porg cart."
"He was curious. The food was... warm."
Jaybo sighed. "Fine. But you're keeping him leashed."
Inside the dome, the atmosphere was thick with smoke and shouts. Droids buzzed past hauling carts. Miners clanged pipes and drank from synth-cans. A pair of Gamorreans argued over bet slips, and a Trandoshan barked at a vendor to refund his credits.
Kliktik walked beside Jaybo, Hermatah creeping behind on his five long root-legs. The plant's twin necks weaved lazily through the air, heads flicking out forked tongue-like tendrils to taste the new environment. People gave them a wide berth.
One of Varklo's local security droids — a clunky, poorly maintained KX unit — stopped them near the entry gate to the arena floor.
"No animals allowed," it buzzed.
Kliktik tilted his head. "He is clearly not an animal."
"He's got teeth, metalhead. He stays out."
Jaybo stepped forward. "Hey, come on, it's just a support creature. Therapy vine. Helps with stress. Totally docile."
The KX droid lifted an arm to bar their path — just a gesture, routine enforcement.
That was when Hermatah struck.
The motion was fast — too fast.
To Hermatah, the raised arm was aggression. A threat.
One of his long necks whipped forward. The tendrils fired from his open pitcher mouth like grappling hooks, wrapping around the droid's arm and yanking. The other head darted in low, clamping down with its hook-shaped teeth. Metal crumpled under the force.
The crowd screamed.
The KX droid flailed, pulling away and swinging a stun baton. Sparks flew. One of Hermatah's heads hissed and retreated; the other just yanked harder — and the security droid's arm ripped off at the elbow.
Kliktik immediately stepped in, his eyes flashing white.
"Hermatah! Coil. Now."
The plant froze — heads still twitching — then reluctantly released the twitching arm and retreated behind Kliktik, roots bunching in a tight, pulsing crouch.
Jaybo looked around. Half the dome was in chaos. The crowd had scattered, some pulling weapons, others just running.
The Trandoshan vendor pointed. "That thing just attacked a guard droid! You're lucky it didn't chew someone's face off!"
Jaybo threw up his hands. "It was self-defense! That guy raised an arm!"
The Neimoidian promoter, Varklo, appeared moments later flanked by more droids. "What in the frozen void is that thing doing here?!"
Kliktik calmly held up his hands. "He misinterpreted a signal. He is young."
"Get it off my station! Now!" Varklo bellowed, pointing toward the docking bay. "You've got one hour before I call the Sector Marshal!"
Jaybo groaned. "Great. Real smooth."
Back aboard the Stentor, things were tense.
Hermatah lay curled in the cargo bay, both heads drooping. Kliktik gently misted the plant's flanks while Jaybo paced with a grim look.
"You said he wouldn't attack!"
Kliktik paused. "I underestimated his trigger response. He has not seen that many crowds."
Jaybo muttered a string of Corellian curses and kicked a wrench across the deck.
Then he stopped.
"Wait... this isn't over."
Kliktik glanced up. "What do you mean?"
Jaybo spun on his heel and activated the terminal. "Varklo wanted a show? Fine. We'll give him one."
He grinned — the kind of grin that only meant trouble.
"Kliktik, how do you feel about using Hermatah as part of your entrance routine?"
Kliktik's eyes flashed. "Theatrical misdirection... I like it."
A week later, they returned. This time for a rematch event Varklo had been promoting aggressively, capitalizing on the chaos from before.
The fight began in darkness. A single spotlight cut across the arena floor.
From a shroud of mist, Hermatah emerged first — coiling, heads swaying, sensory hairs bristling under hidden uplights. The crowd backed away in awe and fear.
Then from behind the creature, Kliktik stepped forward in full Split-mode — black and white paint gleaming, electro-sword igniting with a crack.
The audience lost it.
The fight itself was short — Split dismantled his opponent with elegance and ferocity — but it was the showmanship that left the biggest impression.
Afterwards, in the ship, Jaybo leaned back with a large credit chip in each hand.
"Not bad for a monster plant and a droid with a conscience."
Kliktik sat beside Hermatah, feeding him a dead womprat. "He did not mean harm."
Jaybo chuckled. "Yeah, well. Just remind him not to hug anyone too hard."
Hermatah opened one of his mouths — not in a snarl, but something almost like a... croak of amusement.
And Jaybo, for once, didn't flinch.


Chapter 7

The planet Kullara was a suffocating swamp-ball orbiting the outer rim, where the humidity clung like a parasite and daylight slithered through the haze in sickly green streaks. It was ruled by the Hutt family Kajijic, known for their brutality, love of bloodsport, and casual disdain for any lifeform not dripping in credits.
Jaybo had only meant to scout out the fight scene. He hadn't expected to be dragged into an audience with Chawga the Hutt, a corpulent beast with mold growing between his rolls and an entourage that included a Trandoshan knife-collector and a female Twi'lek with eyes like frost.
Chawga sat upon a dais in a former temple now turned fight palace, the stone walls stained from centuries of sacrifice — first religious, now recreational.
"You fighting droid looks... fragile," Chawga gurgled in Huttese, eyeing Kliktik.
Jaybo resisted the urge to speak back. Instead, he bowed slightly and gestured. "Split's the fastest, smartest droid you'll see on this moon. Just give him a shot."
Chawga rolled a yellow eye. "You'll get your 'shot'. We have a special guest from Nar Shaddaa tonight. He brought his Gank, freshly enhanced."
Jaybo gulped. He'd heard of Ganks — they were a sentient humanoid species of fur-covered carnivores with cybernetic enhancements. part droid, part flesh, trained from birth to be sadistic, cold killers.

Split said nothing. He merely stepped forward, already switched to his lethal form as the crowd began to howl from the viewing platforms overhead.
The arena floor sank into the marsh itself — knee-deep in sludge with massive fungal stalks growing around its rim. It stank of decay and stagnant water. Split emerged, blades at the ready, eyes bright red with calculating violence. On the other side, the Gank thundered out, nearly twice Kliktik's size, plated in durasteel with a vibro-chain lashed to its arm.
It charged immediately.
Kliktik dodged, flipping sideways, his electro-blade scraping along the Gank's shoulder — sparks flew, but it barely flinched. The crowd roared.
Jaybo gripped the edge of the viewing box, heart pounding. "Come on, Klik..."
The fight dragged into its sixth minute. Split was fast, but the Gank was relentless. He landed a solid blow to Split's lower torso — a direct dent that shorted some of his motor controls. The droid stumbled.
"He's not going to make it," Jaybo whispered.
Chawga belched in amusement. Kliktik barely won. Both combatants were locked together, weapon to weapon until Kliktik unsheathed the vibroblade in his forearm which punctured the Gank's throat with an uncompromising hiss.
After the fight, Jaybo made his way through the back alleys toward their hangar. Hermatah skittered beside him, sulking with boredom, both heads twitching.

The next morning,  the stench of sulfur and roasted meat hung thick in the air, curling with smoke and the low drumming of war music. Jabo had spent the previous evening repairing Kliktik. They were invited back to the arena beneath Chawga the Hutt's throne, surrounded by gilded obsidian walls and lit by roaring flame braziers, the stands overflowed with mercs, bounty hunters, and syndicate lieutenants — all screaming for destruction.
Jaybo Hood stood near the edge of the combat floor, squinting up at the gilded balcony where Chawga the Hutt lounged like a pile of rancid leather draped in gold chains and fur. At his side, a protocol droid translated his gravel-thick laughter and guttural bellows.
"The mighty Chawga wishes to extend a proposal," the droid chirped, approaching Jaybo. "You will enter your droid into our grand tournament. The rewards shall be lavish... if you obey."
Jaybo arched an eyebrow. "What's the catch?"
The droid's tone dropped. "Chawga requires your droid to lose the final match. Make it dramatic. Fall with honor. He has invested heavily in another competitor. Defy him... and suffer."
Kliktik, standing silently beside Jaybo, tilted his head ever so slightly.
"Fine," Jaybo said after a pause. "Split will enter. But we don't fight to lose."
The protocol droid's tone flickered uneasily. "You should."

Round after round, Split danced through the competition like a whirlwind of light and precision. He disarmed a Besalisk brawler in ten seconds, crushed a durasteel-clad assassin droid with a flipping plasma strike, and even downed a charging Nexu with blinding footwork and a single, surgical stab.
The crowd adored him.
But by the final round — when Chawga's prized gladiator, a brutish cybernetic Barabel named Korrsh, stormed into the arena. Jaybo could see the Hutt's mood had turned.
Still, Kliktik fought. And he won.
He didn't just win — he humiliated Korrsh with a flawless display of calculated dismemberment, ending the fight by driving his blade into the Barabel's chest and walking away before the corpse hit the floor.
The crowd exploded in awe.
Chawga did not.
"DESTROY HIM!" roared the Hutt, voice deep and wet with rage. "Kill the droid! Kill the boy! I want their plant for my dungeon!"
The guards around the arena drew their blasters as one.
Kliktik's plasma sword ignited mid-spin, his body twisting into a blur — the blade rotated at such speed it formed a shimmering disc of molten energy. Blaster bolts struck the spinning plasma and ricocheted, flying wild into the walls and stands.
Jaybo dove behind cover.
With one fluid motion, Split slid his own blaster from its holster, protected behind the spinning plasma, and — timing each gap perfectly — began firing through his own rotating shield.
His shots punched through, taking down guard after guard with pin-point accuracy. The first fell clutching his chest. The second collapsed with a hole through his visor. The third and fourth screamed as they dropped into the sand.
Then Hermatah charged in.
He'd been watching from the shadows — all five leg-roots pounding into the arena as his twin heads roared open. One tendril lashed out and yanked a guard into his pitcher-shaped mouth with a sickening crunch. Another guard turned to run but was snatched mid-stride, his scream cut short.
Jaybo raced for the exit ramp, calling back, "Split! Hermatah! We're leaving!"
Blaster fire hissed behind him. Kliktik spun once more, launching himself into the air and flipping to land beside Jaybo. Hermatah trailed close, snapping his jaws at the last of the pursuing guards.

Jaybo slammed into the cockpit, flipping switches with a practiced fury. Outside, the palace's skyport erupted in alarms. Chawga's ships — sleet-gray Hutt cartel interceptors — were already lifting off.
"They've scrambled fighters," Kliktik said flatly. "Six. Closing fast."
"I see them." Jaybo's hands danced over the console. "Power to cloaking shroud."
The hull of the Stentor rippled like moonlight on oil. The air around it shimmered and twisted, then stilled. The ship vanished from sight and scanner alike.
Outside, the interceptors screamed past, weapons hot, but they saw nothing.
Jaybo exhaled. "Let's not visit any more Hutt arenas for a while."
Kliktik stared ahead, then allowed himself the faintest smile. "You did warn them."
Behind them, Hermatah let out a low growl of satisfaction and coughed up a piece of boot.


Chapter 8

That was when Jaybo felt it — being followed.
He ducked into a side corridor, firing a short-range stun bolt from his blaster. It caught the stalker in the chest — but only for a second.
The attacker was humanoid, masked, dressed in thick black robes. A bounty hunter. Professional.
Jaybo raised his hands. "I don't want trouble."
The bounty hunter drew a long blade. "That's too bad. Trouble doesn't care what you want."
He lunged.
Jaybo jumped back — fast, but not fast enough. The blade grazed his side. He stumbled into the moss-covered wall, pain exploding in his ribs.
"Target acquired," the hunter said into his comm. "Jaybo Hood, living. Orders?"
"Don't kill him," came a static-laced Huttese reply. "Just maim him."

[RAFF-35]

Continued.....

The bounty hunter stepped forward — but so did something else.
There was a deep, rumbling hiss.
Then Hermatah launched.
Five of his roots uncoiled at once, flinging his body forward like a catapult. Both heads snapped toward the attacker, but only one struck — wrapping tendrils around the bounty hunter's legs, yanking them out from under him with a wet crack.
The other head went for the blade arm.
Hooked teeth sank in. The bounty hunter screamed.
Hermatah's root-fingers wrapped the hunter's limbs, pinning them with crushing force. The vines twitched — feeding the bounty hunter into one of its mouths.
"No!" Jaybo shouted, clutching his ribs.
Hermatah froze.
The predator's mouths trembled with suppressed instinct — but then slowly, reluctantly, both heads pulled away. The bounty hunter slumped unconscious.
Jaybo staggered forward, leaned on Hermatah's flank. "You... you saved me."
Kliktik arrived moments later, blasters ready. He looked between the downed bounty hunter and the blood on Jaybo's shirt.
"Are you harmed?"
Jaybo nodded. "Just a graze. But we need to go. Now."
Back aboard the Stentor, Kliktik ran diagnostics on Jaybo while Hermatah lay curled in a corner, studying with flickering interest.
Jaybo, bandaged and sore, sat up with a groan. "He didn't kill him. I told him not to... and he listened."
Kliktik nodded. "He has formed a bond. Loyalty."
Jaybo looked at the plant.
"Yeah. I think he's more than just a pet now."
The ship's engines roared to life, and they punched out of Kullara's orbit just as more of Chawga's thugs began to mobilize.
As the Stentor vanished into hyperspace, Jaybo leaned back, hand resting on Hermatah's side.
"Thanks, buddy."
One of Hermatah's heads curled toward him — not threatening, not hungry. Just... present.
Maybe even protective.


Chapter 9

Kullara was behind them, lost in the streaks of hyperspace — but Jaybo couldn't shake the chill that had settled in his bones. Even after his wounds were patched, after Split reassured him twenty different ways that the attacker wouldn't follow them... he felt it.
Watched. Hunted.
He stood at the Stentor's forward viewport, watching the stars streak past.
"We've made too much noise," he murmured.
Kliktik approached quietly, his feet making only the faintest clink on the deck plating. "You think the bounty hunter was a warning."
Jaybo turned. "I think it was a message. 'You're not welcome in the big leagues.'"

The bar on Vengorr Prime pulsed with garish light, the laughter of criminals and champions blending with alien music that spilled into the neon-drenched streets. Jaybo Hood was on top of the world — or so it seemed.
He lounged in a high booth, surrounded by a few locals and well-wishers, a Corellian ale in hand. The night's tournament had gone flawlessly — Split had won yet another impossible match, and even Hermatah had garnered a strange kind of notoriety after disarming (and partly devouring) a Trandoshan contestant in a pre-match scuffle.
Jaybo's smile was tired, but genuine.
For a moment, under the flashing lights and swirling smoke, he forgot the shadows that followed them.
He didn't see the stranger enter. No one did. The hooded figure moved like mist — a slip of motion against the chaos.
Jaybo barely registered the weight against the booth cushion before a sharp hiss sounded under the table.
He gasped. Looked down.
A black, three-pronged blade was already buried in his chest — humming with neurotoxin. His body spasmed once, then twice. He reached for the blaster on his thigh, but his fingers were too slow.
"Chawga sends his regards," the assassin whispered into Jaybo's ear, before vanishing into the crowd.
Jaybo slumped forward. Alone.

Aboard the Stentor, hours later, Kliktik stirred from his dormant recharge state as an alert chimed from the flight deck — Jaybo's locator beacon had gone still. No movement. No return signal.
He checked the timestamp.
Three hours.
He tried the comm. Once. Twice.
Static.
Kliktik's processors raced through permutations. His synthetic mind raced — that old, unnatural instinct he never quite trusted.
He took Hermatah with him.
The search took only minutes. The local security had already taped off the scene, uninterested in helping some "droid and walking plant."
When Kliktik found the booth, the blood had already dried. Jaybo's body, cold and curled beneath the table, still had his hand clutched weakly around a commlink.
"Jaybo..."
Kliktik froze. Something in him shattered — deeper than logic, deeper than programming.
He collapsed beside the body. The steel palm of his hand couldn't feel it, but he knew Jaybo was gone.
He let out a sound — a ragged, metallic howl — not like a droid at all.
Hermatah gently nudged Jaybo's body with one of his heads, whining low and confused.
Kliktik said nothing.
Instead, he reached up to the top of his backpack — to the dial that had governed his personality balance for years. The "mood switch," as Jaybo jokingly called it — the only thing that kept Split's friendly companion mode separated from his lethal warrior programming.
He ripped it off.
Sparks jumped. Internal barriers dropped. The companion and the warrior, once kept at bay from one another, merged.
His eyes changed. The pale yellow glint faded into a deep, smoldering red.
He cradled Jaybo's body and whispered a vow:
"I will avenge you. The scum of this galaxy will learn what it means to harm what I love."

The ship descended into the mist-wreathed valleys of Iego — Jaybo's old home.  Kliktik carried his best friend's body down the ramp of the Stentor. Hermatah followed, unusually still, his heads lowered in shared mourning.
Jaybo was laid to rest beneath the very grove where he once taught Kliktik how to repair circuits using clips and old copper wire.
Kliktik didn't speak during the burial.
He placed Jaybo's favorite hydrospanner on top of the grave.
And then he left, silently — returning to the Stentor with a new purpose etched in every servo and circuit of his frame.
Later that night, in the ship's darkened hangar
Kliktik stood alone, surrounded by weapon schematics and bounty lists. Hermatah rested quietly in the corner, the jungle predator somehow subdued by grief.


Chapter 10

Iego's sun poured a golden haze across the hills where Jaybo had once laughed, worked, and dreamed. The Stentor rested in a grove near his grave, cloaked not for stealth, but for reverence. Days passed, then a week.
Kliktik stayed.
Something in him refused to leave — not yet. He wandered through the wilds, sat under the canopy trees, and walked through dust and vines. The jungle didn't repel him; it called to him. He watched how Hermatah slithered and crept and breathed, how the soil shifted beneath weightless leaves. He observed life — unfiltered, brutal, beautiful.
And he felt... incomplete.
One dawn, Kliktik stood beneath the cliffs with cans of scavenged paint. He stripped away the weary black and white colour scheme from his battle scarred body panels. It didn't belong anymore. Jaybo had built a machine — but now that machine had buried its maker.
Kliktik became something else.
He painted his armored limbs the color of desert sand, with deep maroon stripes curling along his chest and limbs like the markings of a nexu. His central plating repainted white, symbolic of bone, of foundation.
A creature reborn.
He even crafted a flowing garment — stitched from local silkweed. It mimicked the long, draping membranes of the Geonosian warrior caste — an homage to the civilization that had first conceived droids like him. It wrapped around his shoulders and hung like wings, rustling faintly with his every move.
When he emerged again from the grove, even Hermatah tilted his twin heads in silent recognition.
Kliktik was gone.
Now... there was only Split.

They left Iego behind at dusk.
The Stentor didn't roar as it launched — it hissed, like a knife drawn from a sheath.
Over the weeks that followed, Split and Hermatah carved a path of retribution across the Outer Rim. They tracked the assassin first — a masked Zygerrian with chemical knives and a record of political killings. Split cornered him on the orbital docks above Voon-Vanq and executed him without a word.
But that was only the beginning.
In a calculated storm of violence, Split followed financial trails, encrypted orders, and silent whispers from underworld brokers — all roads leading back to the Hutt syndicates. The cowardly ones that had hired a mercenariy to kill Jaybo in a backroom deal after the fiasco on Vengorr Prime.
They had laughed when Jaybo died.
They weren't laughing when Split arrived.
He hit Nar Kaaga like a ghost — sabotaging security grids, assassinating lieutenants in their sleep, and leaving trails of scorched durasteel in his wake. Hermatah prowled the alleys, dragging bodies into the darkness with wet, tearing sounds. No one dared to follow.
Split even breached the pleasure barge of Gragga the Malevolent, a corpulent Hutt with a private army. Gragga tried to offer credits. Begged.
Split responded with a blaster bolt to each eye.
By the time the campaign ended, several lesser Hutts were dead, their territories destabilized, and the underground was terrified of a cloaked freighter that could vanish without a trace and leave only carnage behind.

One night, alone in the Stentor's cockpit, Split stood in silence. The nebula outside shifted like smoke.
Hermatah lay curled beneath the console, dreaming whatever strange things a plant might dream.
Split stared at his reflection in the cockpit glass — the wild stripes, the glowing eyes, the Geonosian wings on his back.
All that remained was the promise.
And as long as those responsible still breathed, Split would not rest.


Chapter 11

The galaxy turned, as it always did.
Empires rose and fell. Syndicates were born in blood and broken in silence. Star systems burned for greed, for power, for nothing at all. But in the shadows between the hyperlanes, stories lingered — of a cloaked freighter, of a twin-headed jungle monster that moved like smoke, and of a droid with warpainted armour who hunted for justice.
They called him Split.
After the Hutt bloodshed cooled, Split didn't vanish. He developed.
The same raw precision, the tactical mind, and the furious heart that had made him Jaybo's companion now made him lethal as both a bounty hunter and assassin. But he chose his missions with calculated clarity. He didn't work for the powerful, he worked against them. He protected planetary ecosystems being gutted by mining guilds. He dismantled slavers on the Outer Rim. He tracked warlords who silenced whistleblowers with knives.
He became myth — a ghost in the darkness who answered crimes the Republic ignored.
Split refused to take a single credit for personal comfort. Every bounty he earned was funneled into rebuilding the communities broken by war and greed. Farming colonies. Sanctuary worlds. Shelters for orphans and exiles.
He never forgot Jaybo's ideals.
On Yalara, where forests glowed with bioluminescent fungi, Split dismantled a gas extraction pipeline poisoning the trees. Infiltrators sent to stop him were found cocooned in vines — still alive, but changed. Hermatah had grown large by then, with five heads and a body the size of a speeder, and he protected Split with terrifying loyalty.

On Arvala-7, Split stopped a mercenary band from eradicating a herd of rare wild Blurrgs to claim their land. When their leader threatened him with a thermal detonator, Split pulled the trigger of a concealed hold-out blaster and simply said:
"The wild existed before you. It'll outlast you."
But all things reach their end.
Years passed. Hermatah's leaves began to dull. His heads, once alert, became slower. Even Split — whose core processors had been upgraded a dozen times — found himself slowing too. Not in battle, but inside. The grief had never left, not really. He carried Jaybo's final holorecording embedded in his chest — one he never played.
Until one evening.
The Stentor was parked beneath the glowing skies of Iego once again. Hermatah lay quietly in a thicket, no longer restless. He had come home.
Split sat on the edge of the cargo ramp and pressed a small, cracked button on the chest plate Jaybo once bolted on.
The hologram flickered to life.
Jaybo's voice — young, vibrant, and grinning — spoke as if he were sitting beside him:
"Hey Kliktik. If you're watching this, I guess I'm not around. And that's okay. I just wanted you to know... you were always more than a droid to me. You're my friend. You've got this endless curiosity and compassion inside you. You feel things. You choose things. So whatever you're doing out there, keep choosing the good stuff, okay?"
Split closed his eyes. Or rather... he stopped processing anything else.

[PR19_Kit]

Absolutely amazing! 

As you say, it's vast, but something like that needs to be, it covers whole eras of time, and as Dave said 'Have you sold the film rights yet?'